May 29th, 2012
My trouble is that I try to cover a part entirely. When you do there’s the danger that the patron will leave the theatre feeling that you are so perfectly suited to the character he has just seen that he can’t imagine you in any other part. (…) Mothers with children ran from me in the street. Terrible letters came to me. Letters came from strange people; people who I never believed lived in the world; depraved and disturbed minds, thinking they saw in me the perfect companion, a fellow psychopathic. A success can be too great, I tell you. ~ Peter Lorre modestly discussing his role in Fritz Lang’s M (1931) (via shrbr)

My trouble is that I try to cover a part entirely. When you do there’s the danger that the patron will leave the theatre feeling that you are so perfectly suited to the character he has just seen that he can’t imagine you in any other part. (…) Mothers with children ran from me in the street. Terrible letters came to me. Letters came from strange people; people who I never believed lived in the world; depraved and disturbed minds, thinking they saw in me the perfect companion, a fellow psychopathic. A success can be too great, I tell you.

~ Peter Lorre modestly discussing his role in Fritz Lang’s M (1931)

(via shrbr)

Reblogged from stuffandthings
53 notes·
actor acting
May 29th, 2012

The Key to Success in Filmmaking

While this article in Forbes on Why Immigrants Make Better Entrepreneurs is a bit of pulp, it’s a topic that generates a lot of casual speculation on why some people get a “big break” and others don’t.  The article describes an immigrant, Christian Gheorghe, that was willing to take any job - hauling plywood, driving limos - while simultaneously improving on his craft and chatting up everyone that crossed his path.  His life essentially changed the day that Andrew Saxe entered Gheorghe’s limo.  Saxe needed help programming and Gheorghe had the skill set and the time to oblige.  Saxe Marketing was ultimately sold for $30 million to another firm in 1997.  Gheorghe went on to use his cash windfall to achieve even greater success in Silicon Valley.

The key point here (and one that the article overlooks) is that success is never achieved on your own.  Even if you’re an immigrant.  It’s always a combination of opportunity and preparedness.  Assuming equal parts hard work and diligence, the division between those that achieve and those who do not is drawn along the line of opportunity.  People in filmmaking who have not achieved their goals in spite of their hard work often see the absence of a Christian Gheorghe-like serendipitous encounter.  Reasonably so, almost everything in this industry happens because of who you know; we can’t put our resumé on LinkedIn, list 10 years of experience, and get a job directing, producing, or editing feature films.  If you meet the right person or you’re born into the right family, you have a chance.  Anything short of that, you don’t.  Not even Charlie Chaplin, who came from a dirt-poor family in London, made movies on his own.

The maddening randomness is almost embittering.  But the honest-to-God truth is that none of this matters.  If you keep putting yourself out there, if you keep pushing your limits, if you keep working for/with people you like, and if you keep improving your craft, you improve the odds of getting that Christian Gheorghe break.  If you never get it?  Who cares.  At least you’re doing something you love and you’re living a full life.  The only real drag is that if you never get a break, you’ll have to quit someday - either by force of nature or fact of finance.  But we’re all in this for the ride, not the result; we all know how this story ultimately ends and it ends the same way for everyone.   Let go, enjoy it, and make movies while you still can.

~ü

100 notes·
filmmaking collaboration
May 14th, 2012
Zoom An actual comment card from a test screening of David Cronenberg’s VIDEODROME. ~ criterioncollection (One of my favorite films. ~ü)
An actual comment card from a test screening of David Cronenberg’s VIDEODROME.

~ criterioncollection

(One of my favorite films. ~ü)

Reblogged from Criterion Corner
1,023 notes·
audience
May 14th, 2012
Godard got it exactly backwards. Cinema is not truth 24 times a second, it is lies 24 times a second. Actors are pretending to be people they’re not, in situations and settings which are completely illusory. Day for night, dry for wet, Vancouver for New York, potato shavings for snow. The building is a thin-walled set, the sunlight is a Xenon, and the traffic noise is supplied by the sound designers. It’s all illusion, but the prize goes to those who make the fantasy the most real, the most visceral, the most involving. This sensation of truthfulness is vastly enhanced by the stereoscopic illusion.
~ James Cameron in 2008
105 notes·
auteur cinema
May 7th, 2012

Editing, Producing, and Directing:

In response to my post Editing With Intention, Rob at York University wrote:

I just returned from a masterclass with Joe Walker editor of SteveMcQueen’s Hunger + Shame. His points matched closely with what you say. He explained how McQueen shoots very little (and in fact hates the word) coverage forcing him as an editor to hold on shots. Ultimately this is good because it allows you to pinpoint what is really important in the scene + question what the audience has to see, ie. do we REALLY need to see character A when he talks? Directing can force pace.

The rest of Rob’s experience, which is posted here, is an interesting recap on how much impact the director’s decisions in production have on what is possible in post-production. This might seem obvious, but in the case of a director/editor relationship like Steven Spielberg and Verna Fields, Verna exerted quite a bit of power and influence on a film like Jaws because Spielberg was able to shoot so much footage.

There is, of course, not right way of doing things, but shooting more footage (and spending more money in turn) will give you much more flexibility in post-production.  Now that we’re talking time and money, the producer will inevitably weigh in with their thoughts on how the film should be made.  In the end, people often associate a movie and the term ‘filmmaker’ with a director.  Depending on the flick, this may or may not be the case.

~ü

53 notes·
editing directing producing
May 5th, 2012
Identify your own obsessions, then figure out how to make them interesting to other people.
~ ScreenwritingTips 

(Source: screenwritingtips)

Reblogged from Kalen blogs now.
250 notes·
writing art
May 4th, 2012

Dear Hitch,

In spite of your wide and generous disregard of my communications on the subject of the script of Strangers on a Train and your failure to make any comment on it, and in spite of not having heard a word from you since I began the writing of the actual screenplay — for all of which I might say I bear no malice, since this sort of procedure seems to be part of the standard Hollywood depravity — in spite of this and in spite of this extremely cumbersome sentence, I feel that I should, just for the record, pass you a few comments on what is termed the final script. I could understand your finding fault with my script in this or that way, thinking that such and such a scene was too long or such and such a mechanism was too awkward. I could understand you changing you mind about the things you specifically wanted, because some of such changes might have been imposed on you from without. What I cannot understand is your permitting a script which after all had some life and vitality to be reduced to such a flabby mass of clichés, a group of faceless characters, and the kind of dialogue every screen writer is taught not to write — the kind that says everything twice and leaves nothing to be implied by the actor or the camera. Of course you must have had your reasons but, to use a phrase once coined by Max Beerbohm, it would take a ‘far less brilliant mind than mine’ to guess what they were.

Regardless of whether or not my name appears on the screen among the credits, I’m not afraid that anybody will think I wrote this stuff. They’ll know damn well I didn’t. I shouldn’t have minded in the least if you had produced a better script — believe me, I shouldn’t. But if you wanted something written in skim milk, why on earth did you bother to come to me in the first place? What a waste of money! What a waste of time! It’s no answer to say that I was well paid. Nobody can be adequately paid for wasting his time.

Raymond Chandler
~ Raymond Chandler to Alfred Hitchcock, Dec. 6, 1950.  Published on Letters of Note, brought to my attention by caioamnesiac.
26 notes·
directors
April 30th, 2012
Zoom Editing With Intention:  After assembling the footage for one of our forthcoming narrative films (currently titled Without. Within.), I was considering ways to approach the actual edit itself.  The assembly is an encouraging start.  The film flows quickly, nicely.  So what am I hoping to get out of the first serious pass?  I defer to Walter Murch who effortlessly describes the quality of a good edit: The underlying principle: Always try to do the most with the least - with the emphasis on try. […]  Why?  Because you want to do only what is necessary to engage the imagination of the audience - suggestion is always more effective than exposition.  Past a certain point, the more effect you put into wealth of detail, the more you encourage the audience to become spectators rather than participants.  The same principle applies to all the various crafts of filmmaking: acting, art direction, photography, music, costume, etc… So in an attempt to distill this film’s essence I consider what I’m attempting to do in each scene: Scene 1: I want to show my character’s anxiety based on his loss - a focus on his own, singular pain. Scene 2: Perspective: my character’s inner-state reflected in the cold outer world. Scene 3: Anger and harshness that ultimately gives way to the acceptance of impermanence and the beauty of a cherished memory. My initial thought on how to reflect the first scene’s anxiety is though the use of jump cuts.  After trying it, I immediately realized that it wasn’t quite right.  Aggressive jump cutting in a film filled with winter solitude felt wrong.  I was absolutely not doing the most with the least.  I was forcing the issue on a scene where the anxiety is already apparent.   I come back to asking myself how I can do more with less; how can I ask the audience to become a participant rather than a spectator?  I immediately realize that I linger on some shots too long.  At times I allow the actor to complete an action in a single shot when it’s more powerful to cut to a different shot and allow the audience to fill in the space between.  It’s a win-win - I strengthen the pacing while making some cuts more unsettling than others. ~ü [Image: Schmüdde Without. Within. (2011)]

Editing With Intention: 

After assembling the footage for one of our forthcoming narrative films (currently titled Without. Within.), I was considering ways to approach the actual edit itself.  The assembly is an encouraging start.  The film flows quickly, nicely.  So what am I hoping to get out of the first serious pass?  I defer to Walter Murch who effortlessly describes the quality of a good edit:

The underlying principle: Always try to do the most with the least - with the emphasis on try. […]  Why?  Because you want to do only what is necessary to engage the imagination of the audience - suggestion is always more effective than exposition.  Past a certain point, the more effect you put into wealth of detail, the more you encourage the audience to become spectators rather than participants.  The same principle applies to all the various crafts of filmmaking: acting, art direction, photography, music, costume, etc…

So in an attempt to distill this film’s essence I consider what I’m attempting to do in each scene:

  • Scene 1: I want to show my character’s anxiety based on his loss - a focus on his own, singular pain.
  • Scene 2: Perspective: my character’s inner-state reflected in the cold outer world.
  • Scene 3: Anger and harshness that ultimately gives way to the acceptance of impermanence and the beauty of a cherished memory.

My initial thought on how to reflect the first scene’s anxiety is though the use of jump cuts.  After trying it, I immediately realized that it wasn’t quite right.  Aggressive jump cutting in a film filled with winter solitude felt wrong.  I was absolutely not doing the most with the least.  I was forcing the issue on a scene where the anxiety is already apparent.  

I come back to asking myself how I can do more with less; how can I ask the audience to become a participant rather than a spectator?  I immediately realize that I linger on some shots too long.  At times I allow the actor to complete an action in a single shot when it’s more powerful to cut to a different shot and allow the audience to fill in the space between.  It’s a win-win - I strengthen the pacing while making some cuts more unsettling than others.

~ü

[Image: Schmüdde Without. Within. (2011)]

52 notes·
editing
April 30th, 2012
It’s not like I have an aversion to my own films, but at a certain point the last thing I want to do is watch my own movies. I just like to put things out there and then walk away. I don’t have my own posters in my house. I don’t even own my own dvds or books that I’ve written. I don’t have anything. You would walk in my house and you wouldn’t see anything that reminds you of me except pictures of myself and my family. I never understood going to director friends’ offices and it’s just covered with their works. It’s like living in your own asshole. I feel like you can get really caught up in some kind of history, or living in the past. I know I put myself into those movies, my ideas, and they exist almost like your children, a child would exist. But there’s something nice about putting them out there, leaving them to their own devices, and just going out there and making up something else new.
Harmony Korine

(Source: korine)

Reblogged from Baek Ho Productions
201 notes·
directors
April 28th, 2012
Is It Time To Let Moviegoers Send Texts During A Film?  IMAX’s Greg Foster seemed to like the idea of relaxing the absolute ban on phone use in theaters. His 17-year-old son “constantly has his phone with him,” he says. “We want them to pay $12 to $14 to come into an auditorium and watch a movie. But they’ve become accustomed to controlling their own existence.” Banning cell phone use may make them “feel a little handcuffed.” I can’t say that I’m thrilled that we’re at this juncture in filmgoing, but it’s a discussion that needs to be had.  First of all, if Greg Foster’s son compulsively checks his phone, it means that his son has little sense of agency - the phone is controlling his existence.  That’s the larger issue at play.  I don’t think it is a teenage thing either.  I have gone to films with fellow filmmakers in their late 20s and have seen them respond to non-urgent texts during a film. Classical music venues have been facing issues such as these for decades.  As the audience ages, they wonder how to bring younger people to listen to pieces by Bach, Mozart, Ligeti, and Glass.  They discuss amplification, allowing or encouraging audience participation, and relaxing the dress code. I suppose I’m not concerned about these issues.  The etiquette will work itself out.  I know what I like, however.  I like to focus on beautiful pieces of music.  I love to dive into a great film.  I want to engage a piece of art and not concern myself about what I have to do later, who I should be texting etc… In other words, I enjoy handing myself over to something else.  I honestly feel bad for those people that can’t relax and go a few hours without checking their phone.   In the end, it’s simply a matter of education and experience.  Telling people NOT to do something only encourages it.  Showing them the joys of contemplation, focus, and engagement will do more to combat the compulsions of the Distracted Generation more than any rule possibly could. It reminds me of this book by Eric Siblin, a pop and rock music critic that discovered Bach later in life.  Like so many others that are not raised knowing the joy of Bach’s work, once he was formally introduced and really understood how to listen to the music, he was enchanted.  So much so that he switched gears entirely and wrote a beautiful biography of this experience called The Cello Suites: J. S. Bach, Pablo Casals, and the Search for a Baroque Masterpiece. This is incredibly common.  People ignore Bach because they don’t understand it. People text because it is habitual.  If you want people not to text in a theater, simply show them how liberating it can be to free yourself from this compulsion.  Rules are made to be broken.  Habits are too. ~ü [Image: The Invisible Cinema designed by Peter Kubelka] [Quote: David Lieberman, Is It Time To Let Moviegoers Send Texts During A Film?: CinemaCon]

Is It Time To Let Moviegoers Send Texts During A Film? 

IMAX’s Greg Foster seemed to like the idea of relaxing the absolute ban on phone use in theaters. His 17-year-old son “constantly has his phone with him,” he says. “We want them to pay $12 to $14 to come into an auditorium and watch a movie. But they’ve become accustomed to controlling their own existence.” Banning cell phone use may make them “feel a little handcuffed.”

I can’t say that I’m thrilled that we’re at this juncture in filmgoing, but it’s a discussion that needs to be had.  First of all, if Greg Foster’s son compulsively checks his phone, it means that his son has little sense of agency - the phone is controlling his existence.  That’s the larger issue at play.  I don’t think it is a teenage thing either.  I have gone to films with fellow filmmakers in their late 20s and have seen them respond to non-urgent texts during a film.

Classical music venues have been facing issues such as these for decades.  As the audience ages, they wonder how to bring younger people to listen to pieces by Bach, Mozart, Ligeti, and Glass.  They discuss amplification, allowing or encouraging audience participation, and relaxing the dress code.

I suppose I’m not concerned about these issues.  The etiquette will work itself out.  I know what I like, however.  I like to focus on beautiful pieces of music.  I love to dive into a great film.  I want to engage a piece of art and not concern myself about what I have to do later, who I should be texting etc… In other words, I enjoy handing myself over to something else.  I honestly feel bad for those people that can’t relax and go a few hours without checking their phone.  

In the end, it’s simply a matter of education and experience.  Telling people NOT to do something only encourages it.  Showing them the joys of contemplation, focus, and engagement will do more to combat the compulsions of the Distracted Generation more than any rule possibly could.

It reminds me of this book by Eric Siblin, a pop and rock music critic that discovered Bach later in life.  Like so many others that are not raised knowing the joy of Bach’s work, once he was formally introduced and really understood how to listen to the music, he was enchanted.  So much so that he switched gears entirely and wrote a beautiful biography of this experience called The Cello Suites: J. S. Bach, Pablo Casals, and the Search for a Baroque Masterpiece.

This is incredibly common.  People ignore Bach because they don’t understand it. People text because it is habitual.  If you want people not to text in a theater, simply show them how liberating it can be to free yourself from this compulsion.  Rules are made to be broken.  Habits are too.

~ü

[Image: The Invisible Cinema designed by Peter Kubelka]

[Quote: David Lieberman, Is It Time To Let Moviegoers Send Texts During A Film?: CinemaCon]

61 notes·
industry exhibition
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@dschmudde

Techniques for directing film. More than the script, bigger than the screen - the tangible and mystical characteristics of truly great filmmaking.